Happy birthday, Air Force! (HISTORIC PHOTOS)

Monday

Sep 25, 2017 at 10:25 AMSep 25, 2017 at 10:27 AM

James K. Plew and Robert L.F. “Bob” Sikes were two very different men. One thing they had in common, however, was a desire to bring the military and all of its economic benefits to the Florida Panhandle.

Long before the Air Force was called the Air Force, military aviators and the people who design, test and maintain their aircraft and weapons have been at home in Northwest Florida.

If you’ve lived in this area for any length of time, you’re probably aware of just how important the military in general — and the Air Force in particular — is to the local economy. According to the Okaloosa County Economic Development Council, defense spending accounts for 73 percent of the county’s economic activity, with a total economic impact of nearly $7.5 billion.

While the Air Force is celebrating its 70th birthday this month, Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field can trace their roots back to an even earlier date. And while the growth of the massive facility can be attributed to the hard work of thousands of people over the years, two men stand out as the base’s primary benefactors.

James K. Plew and Robert L.F. “Bob” Sikes were two very different men. One thing they had in common, however, was a desire to bring the military and all of its economic benefits to the Florida Panhandle.

They succeeded beyond either of their wildest dreams.

PHOTOS: Eglin in the 1930's >>

PHOTOS: Eglin in the 1940's >>

PHOTOS: Eglin in the 1950's >>

The visionary

Way back in 1934, during the height of the Great Depression, Valparaiso developer and entrepreneur James Plew offered the United States government 1,460 acres of undeveloped woodlands for use as a bombing and gunnery range for the Army Air Corps Tactical School, which was based at Maxwell Field near Montgomery, Alabama.

According to Eglin’s official website, officials from Maxwell had been eyeing the area (as well as the nearby Gulf of Mexico) since 1931. On June 14, 1935, the Army Air Corps activated the Valparaiso Bombing and Gunnery Base, which was renamed Eglin Field on Aug. 4, 1937 in honor of Lt. Col. Frederick I. Eglin, who was killed in an aircraft crash earlier that year.

While Plew is frequently cited for his role in the development of what would become the world’s largest Air Force Base, few know the details of his background. A medical school graduate with an entrepreneurial bent, Plew made his fortune in his native Illinois back in the 1880s.

Although he died before she was born, Plew’s great-granddaughter, Niceville resident Judy Byrne Riley, recalls hearing many stories about the businessman from her mother, the late Rae Ruckel Williams.

“While he was in medical school, he noticed that the doctors and nurses were always having to get their uniforms cleaned,” Riley said. “So he started a laundry service.”

That laundry service would go on to become The Office Toilet Supply Company, just one of many corporations Plew would found or manage over the years.

Susan Wilson, a member of the Niceville Planning Commission along with Riley, has been researching Plew and discovered that Eglin’s benefactor was something of a Renaissance man.

“Susan’s found some wonderful information,” Riley said. “He was an inventor as well as a businessman. He was very cerebral.”

Among Plew’s innovations was the Plew bicycle saddle — a forerunner to the modern bicycle seat. An advertisement Wilson found in the May 30, 1897 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune described the seat as “The only saddle on the market with a pneumatic nose. … Absolutely guaranteed not to injure or cause the slightest discomfort.”

By 1905, Plew was listed as a member of the board of directors for multiple large companies, including a gold mining operation. An aviation enthusiast, he was one of the sponsors of the 1910 Chicago Air Show and the first president of the Aero Club of Illinois.

Plew came to Florida in the early 1920s.

“His wife’s health wasn’t very good, so they were thinking about moving to South Florida,” she said. “They got as far as Pensacola when he heard about the property that was for sale by the original Valparaiso Development Co., and he put a bid on it.”

With 14,000 acres of mostly undeveloped piney woods on his hands, Plew had plenty of reasons to encourage the military to find a home in Northwest Florida. The arrival of Army Air Corps personnel helped his real estate, banking and other business interests thrive.

Plew died in 1938, but the desire to see Northwest’s Florida’s military presence expand lived on after him.

PHOTOS: Eglin in the 1960's >>

PHOTOS: Eglin in the 1970's >>

PHOTOS: Eglin in the 1980's >>

The He-Coon

In 1936, Crestview newspaper publisher and Plew associate Robert L.F. “Bob” Sikes was elected to Congress. From the moment he arrived in Washington until the day he left office in 1979, Sikes made it his mission to bring home the bacon to his district, with most of that bacon coming in the form of military spending.

In 1940, (early in Sikes’ tenure) the U.S. Forest Service transferred 340,000 acres from the Choctawhatchee National Forest to what was then known as the War Department. With the stroke of a pen, Eglin’s footprint grew 300 times larger.

Sikes’ nickname, “The He-Coon,” was inspired by the way in which the dominant male in a group of racoons takes care of his own. Throughout World War II and subsequent conflicts, Sikes lived up to his moniker by continuing to secure defense spending for a number of military facilities throughout his district, from Pensacola Naval Air Station to Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City.

As his seniority in Congress grew, so did Sikes’ power and influence. In his aptly titled autobiography, “He-Coon: The Bob Sikes Story,” Sikes proudly pointed out that even during dramatic federal budget cuts in 1957, he managed to take care of his district, securing funding for major construction projects and programs at Eglin and Hurlburt.

“The military continued to be by far the most dependable source of economic strength in my district,” he wrote. “The $2 billion overall cut in military spending had little effect in West Florida.”

PHOTOS: Eglin in the 1990's >>

PHOTOS: Eglin from 2000-present >>

From World War II to today

By the time the Air Force became an independent branch of the armed forces in 1947, Eglin was already playing an essential role in the nation’s defense. The legendary Doolittle Raiders trained there for their daring bombing raid over Tokyo in 1942, and since that time Eglin and Hurlburt have been on the cutting edge of the development, testing and training for the Air Force’s state-of-the-art weaponry and aircraft.

From the early days of Air Force Special Operations units at Hurlburt in the 1960s to the development of the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (the MOAB, or “Mother of All Bombs”) at Eglin’s Air Force Research Laboratory in 2003, Northwest Florida’s bases have played a role in just about every Air Force mission.

Those missions haven’t been without controversy, however. During the Vietnam War, dozens of local defense contractors were exposed to hazardous chemicals during the testing of notorious herbicides such as Agent Orange on the base’s test range. Even today, some descendants of the area’s pioneer families are still bitter over the federal government’s seizure of their ancestors’ homesteads during the base’s formative years.

More recently, the late Mayor Bruce Arnold of Valparaiso sued the Air Force over concerns that noise from the F-35 fighter jet would make his residents’ homes uninhabitable. The suit was settled and the F-35 arrived at Eglin — albeit in smaller numbers than originally projected.

With the livelihood of most local residents dependent upon Northwest Florida’s military presence, however, it’s not hard to find people eager to wish the Air Force a very happy 70th birthday.

“As a near-lifelong resident of Okaloosa County, I’ve always enjoyed running outside to watch the planes that were creating the ‘sound of freedom’ as they flew overhead,” said Jerry Williams, the president/CEO of Eglin Federal Credit Union and a former honorary commander at Hurlburt Field. “I still do that today. I never tire of it.

“Having the Air Force as a neighbor is an incredible blessing to our region. We benefit from economic stabilization. We benefit from environmental protection of the land and gulf ranges. We develop lifelong friendships with the men and women who answered the call to defend our freedom. I’m proud to be able to say, ‘Happy birthday, Air Force!’ ”